A business object is a software entity representing real-world items used during the transaction of business. For example, a business object may represent a business document such as a sales order, a purchase order, or an invoice. A business object may also represent items such as a product, a business partner, or a piece of equipment.
A business object may include business logic and/or data having any suitable structure. The structure of a business object may be determined based on the requirements of a business scenario in which the business object is to be deployed. A business solution for a particular business scenario may include many business objects, where the structure of each business object has been determined based on the requirements of the particular business scenario.
A customer deploying a business solution may desire changes to the business objects included in the business solution. For example, a customer may require additional business logic (i.e., functional extensions) associated with fields of a business object.
Commonly-assigned and co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. Nos. (Dynamic Extension Fields for Business Objects, 12/198/315) and (Dynamic Node Extensions and Extension Fields for Business Objects, 12/198,351) describe systems for adding extension fields to a business object. A customer may require functional extensions associated with the extension fields, such as logic to calculate the value of an extension field based on other fields of the business object (e.g., a value of extension field “OverallAmount” of the “PurchaseOrder” business object). Functional extensions may also be desired for performing integrity checks on the extension fields, and/or for persistency handling related to the extension fields.
Conventionally, functional extensions are added to a business object by employing class extensions at the technical implementation level. Components of the database system relating to the extensions must be recompiled to effect such a change, and the change occurs globally with respect to all instantiations of the business object within the system. In some scenarios, particularly service-on-demand scenarios, multiple customers (tenants) receive services from a single application platform. If one of the multiple tenants adds functional extensions to a business object using class extensions, each other tenant would be forced to adapt to the additional extension logic.
Systems for adding functional extensions to a business object are desired. Such a system may reduce a need for recompiling the application platform, may enable one or more tenants to add respective functional extensions, and/or may provide tenant-specific views provided by tenant-specific functional extensions.